The Department of Physics and Astronomy sponsored the FIRST Robotics team from West High School (Team 3006, Red Rock Robotics). The FIRST Robotics league (www.usfirst.org) involves high school students who work in teams to design, build, and compete robots to address specific challenges each year. The Department has sponsored this program in an effort to increase high school student interest in science, engineering, technology, and the importance of team-led organization for complex problem solving.

As part of the U’s institutional participation in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), the Department hosted the first meeting of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) collaboration on 8-10 March 2010 in downtown Salt Lake City.

The Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC) has made and plans to continue making some changes to create a more interactive and cohesive environment for graduate students in the Department. First, Graduate Student Seminars were instituted last year and have been popular and well received. These seminars are an opportunity for graduate students to give a talk in a low stress environment to an audience of fellow students as well as inform the student body about current work around the department. The graduate students have heard talks from William Baker, Nick Borys, Zayd Ma, Monica Allen, Ben Mangum, and Dustin Winslow. The year with conclude with Rob Roundy and we have students lined up for fall already.

The department bid farewell to Professors Frank van den Bosch and Dane McCamey, who both left the University in June 2010 to pursue other academic opportunities. Van den Bosch accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in Astronomy at Yale University, and McCamey became a Discovery Fellow of the Australian Research Council at the University of Sydney, Australia.